The double-edged sword of a late diagnosis

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Sometimes I actually really enjoy it. It depends on the people that I am with and what we are doing. But even when I really enjoy it I still get social exhaustion pretty quickly and the results of that can be severe so I have to be careful.

Yes, but they're ethnically and culturally separate from the Eastern European variety. They call themselves Travelers, and they often live in travel trailers and sell things door-to-door (bootleg dvds and rugs, mainly). They have their own distinct accent, and a huge affinity for piebald gypsy ponies. They like to wear track suits and gold chains.
If you want to see some, search YouTube for "knacker fights". They arrange fist-fights between feuding families, bet on them, and sell dvds of the event.

I'm not sure whether being diagnosed at school age would have been better or worse. Adults would maybe have made more allowances, but kids when and where I grew up were pretty rabid. Teachers came down hard on racism, but all other differences were fair game.
I regret not being diagnosed when I was at university- it could have saved both my career and my mental health. I now survive on a part-time cleaning job and benefits, and my life has been dominated by anxiety and depression. On the other hand, my ten lost years have been great artistically.... I might have kept on being an unproductive and rather crap amateur classical composer in a too-safe academic environment. Instead, I moved sideways into being a singer-songwriter out of sheer need for a creative outlet in my new, impoverished life. Turns out I'm rather good at it.

I was diagnosed just 7 months ago, at the age of 34. This is my first post on this website.

I did feel a sense of relief once I finally received the diagnosis; it felt as if a lot of things suddenly "made sense." I had always thought that there was just something different about me that made it difficult to fit in with others, and made me struggle at relationships. For a number of years, I received a tremendous amount of therapy; I actually put off getting the Asperger's diagnosis for almost two years after it was first suggested to me (by a couples counselor) because I believed I had more severe mental health issues and that the Asperger's (if real) was a smokescreen. Perhaps I needed to believe I had something like Bipolar II or BPD to be able to accept some of my past actions.

I believe that I would have benefited from an earlier diagnosis, but I am not entirely certain. In school, I was believed to be super-smart but (especially as I got older) disorganized, underachieving, lazy, and possessing a bad attitude. Yet, I was always seen as a capable honors student who didn't do what he was capable of, not as someone who could have benefited from accommodation. Reading, comprehending, and remembering were a struggle for me, even though ostensibly I read "on a high level."

My doubt about the benefit I could have received from an early diagnosis stems from the things I read, and hear, that seem to place so many limitations on what someone with Asperger's can do. You go online and you read things, i.e. 80% of people with Asperger's struggle to find stable employment, or that people with Asperger's can only succeed by excelling at a special interest or finding something that doesn't require socialization. (Comically, library work is suggested for people with Asperger's, even though library work done well is one of the most socially demanding jobs there is!)

I work as a children's librarian. This means that I work with people all day long: I help children and parents find books, and I plan programs that make kids want to come to the library and encourage them to read for fun. There is little about the job that is introverted; even when I do things like decide what call number goes on a book, I sit at a public desk where I can be interrupted at any time.

I love what I do, even though it tires me (and it probably tires me more than it would someone who isn't on the spectrum.) I find it to be truly fulfilling and rewarding work, and I bristle at the stereotype that people with Asperger's can only be fulfilled by doing something that requires no interaction.

I wonder though if having the diagnosis early would have steered me toward something that was more stereotypical. I think it's possible, but I think that the pain of not understanding why life was so difficult for me, of simply feeling like a reject was far greater.